Walking Tour Of San Francisco Explores Coffeehouses
Javawalk, a new San Francisco walking tour, provides an entree to the city’s coffeehouse culture with two-hour jaunts that start in the Union Square area and wind through Chinatown, Jackson Square and North Beach, where cafe stops are sandwiched between visits to a local coffee roaster and a purveyor of espresso machines.
The tours, at 10 a.m. and noon Tuesdays through Saturdays, are priced at $15 for adults, $7.50 for age 12 and younger.
For details, call (415) 673-9255.
Hot stuff
The best Caribbean islands for singles for 10 different activities/attractions, as selected by the Single Traveler newsletter (708-272-6788):
Beaches: Antigua, Barbados.
Scuba: Bonaire, Cayman Islands.
Snorkeling: Virgin Gorda, Turks & Caicos.
Cuisine: Martinique, Curacao.
Upscale: St. Martin.
Culture: Puerto Rico.
Shopping: St. Thomas.
Nature: St. John (U.S. Virgin Islands).
Carnival: Trinidad.
Nightlife: Jamaica.
Woof
Pet Cruzin’, a Sacramento company that calls itself the nation’s only pet travel agency, specializes in trip-planning for pets and their owners.
For a $75 fee, the company will plan hour-by-hour itineraries, provide packing checklists, book airline tickets and make reservations at pet-friendly hotels and motels.
The company also has a free brochure, Take the Worry Out of Vacationing With Your Pet, available by calling (916) 536-9859.
Scam alert
Taking a taxi can be an expensive and unpleasant experience in Prague.
With more than 100 million visitors pouring into the Czech Republic last year, taxi drivers in the capital have been charging tourists exorbitant prices, and often insisting on payment with insults and even punches.
There have been reports of tourists being charged more than 10 times the $20 that a ride from the airport to the city should cost.
Many meters are rigged, so some tourists prefer to negotiate a fare with the driver, writing the agreed price on a piece of paper and then paying no more.
Those staying in a hotel should ask the front desk to call a cab.
Hit singles
Two CD-ROMs packed with information of use to travelers are becoming available in computer stores around the nation.
Precision Mapping 2.0 for Windows features a detailed map of the entire continental United States.
It includes more than 17 million streets and roads - virtually every street in the country - and almost 3 million miles of rivers and streams.
Users can search by city name, street name, address, ZIP code, area code, and latitude and longitude.
The program will even search down to the level of a street block, or a cross street or intersection.
Once a location has been found, Precision Mapping 2.0 can be used to create a custom color map that can be exported for use in a word processing program or spreadsheet.
Available at many computer outlets and bookstores, Precision Mapping 2.0 has a street price of around $79.
Almost a companion program is the 1995 Wayzata World Factbook, a multimedia gazetteer compiled from information supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other official sources.
It provides cultural, governmental, economic and demographic profiles of 264 countries, regions and territories.
The profiles are enhanced by maps, sound effects, color flags and more than 200 photographs of world landmarks, from the pyramids to the Great Wall of China.
Also included are entry requirements for travel, State Department travel advisories and terrorist group profiles.
The program has a street price of about $20 and operates with Macintosh or Windows machines.
It is available at computer stores or by mail from Wayzata Technology, 21 Northeast Fourth Street, Grand Rapids, MN 55744; (800) 735-7321.